10 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

While the 1980s output of Australia's oft misunderstood Severed Heads is well known, the 2000s were also an intensely creative period for the group.  Along with a periodical magazine/album called Op, Severed Heads released limited hand-cut discs, two computer games and a handful of ultra-rare artworks. Medical Records is proud to present a new museum entitled Clifford 2000: a 180gm double album holding 18 years of music over four sides of continuous montage personally segued by Mr. Ellard himself.

Out December 8, 2020 on Medical Records.

03 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

The midnight hour crept unto thee with hasty caution, revealing A Little Night Music: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North, our third putrid prowl into Halloween-inspired sounds to torment and tantalize throughout the season. For this bout of distinguished dementia, we culled 31 brand new tracks of haunted hysteria conjured by some of the most alluring ambientists and outer auteurs from around the world.

Spanning over two hours across two cassettes, A Little Night Music… unfurls itself in a literary horror structure, appearing and disappearing through a stirring Prologue and Epilogue by London-based cellist Oliver Coates, with each side of the cassettes introducing its Chapter with a chilling dirge courtesy of the inscrutable Geographic North House Band.

What fills the ensuing pages is a mirthful tale concocted by an assembly exploring a realm all at once mournful and fatalist at its core. Entries from Clarice Jensen, Malibu, and the collaboration of Like a Villain and Christina Vantzou bring about endless glacial landscapes accented by pitch-grey skies. Conversely, transmissions from Michael Valentine West, M. Sage, Gregg Kowalsky, and Austrian ambient stalwart Fennesz explore richly textured mines of foreboding glee.

Suspicion is the word when considering Zelienople's eerie horse-carriage clip-clop, Nick Malkin's neon-lit noir-jazz, or Carmen Villain's gripping dub excursion. Elsewhere Ki Oni, Takagi Masakatsu, and Mary Lattimore (joined here by Paul Sukeena) provide glimmers of warmth amidst a tortured chill.

Notable is the resurrection of Lotus Plaza and his solemnly hopeful piano composition, while barren hallucinations courtesy of Alex Zhang Hungtai, Ilyas Ahmed, and Danny Paul Grody set the stage for a third act confrontation from Atlantans Fit of Body and Algiers, providing a one-two serving of sensual unrest and cautionary homily.

With hope and resolve shimmering through the final moments of our journey, know that all proceeds from the digital and cassette editions go directly toward Feminist Women's Health Center, an Atlanta-based nonprofit providing safe, accessible, and compassionate abortion and gynecological care to all those who need it without judgement.

More information can be found here.

03 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

Prana Crafter is William Sol, a musical mystic who blends the raw energies of nature with guitars, synthesizers, singing bowls, and a dose of flow-consciousness. The resulting sonic nectar flows out from the amplifier, cascading in the mind of the listener, splashing mantras against the listener’s third ear. Some music is meant to entertain, to be consumed like flashing patterns on a TV screen. Not so with the music of Prana Crafter. This music is a sonic-tapestry of energies that are meant to envelop the listener and deliver a message that, as Sol puts it, cannot be known through symbol or through sign.

Likened to artists across the psychedelic and folk spectrums—Popul Vuh, Agitation Free, Six Organs/Ben Chasny, —Sol's self-professed mentors-in-spirit Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, and Manuel Göttsching are present as well in familiar and surprising ways. In reviews it has been said that Prana Crafter’s music is "an example of psych-folk at its finest" (Raven Sings the Blues), "like a long-lost pressing from the early '70s, it's a mist-shrouded mysterious meditation" (Shindig Magazine), and even that, "few other musicians are making music as ambitious and genuine as Prana Crafter" (The Active Listener).

Will has said he thinks of himself as a conduit when recording and with MorphoMystic, Prana Crafter are creating truly Cosmic Music, a synthesized mediation – think if you will of Terry Reilly and Sandy Bull blending their hypnotic energy flow together. MorphoMystic is a 35 minute kosmische-inspired acid opus that lets your mind venture in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream before gently floating you back down to earth.

More information can be found here and here.

03 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

A new sub-label of the longstanding Canadian electro imprint Suction Records, Ice Machine — focusing on old-school wave/post-punk sounds — is thrilled to present a new, deluxe reissue of Pow Wow, the debut 1982 solo LP from Cabaret Voltaire's Stephen Mallinder.  Now expanded to a double-LP, and also released on CD/digital, it's a definitive reissue which now includes Mallinder's early solo discography in its entirety. This collection of mutant dub/funk/postpunk sounds just as fresh and contemporary in 2020 as it did in 1982 (note Autechre's inclusion of standout cut "Del Sol" in a mix earlier this year), and highlights Mallinder's crucial contributions to Cabaret Voltaire.

Some words from Mr. Mallinder on the scene and era from which Pow Wow was born: "It was an interesting, and inspiring, time. The primal caterwaul of punk was dying and lots of really significant things were emerging from the fires. Much looser vibes were in the air and there was a much more exploratory feel. Punk had championed a visceral, anti-intellectual approach but in truth the real characters brought so much more to the table, and what began to happen - from people like The Pop Group to Throbbing Gristle, and emerging scenes from No New York to Factory Records - is we began to embrace the art of it all. There was acknowledgement of the importance of books, films, graphic art, and experimentation with all those mediums. We were just as interested in turning over rocks to see what lay beneath, as throwing them. There was a sense of new magik emerging."

Pow Wow was commissioned by the Fetish Records label, and recorded at the Cabs' Western Works studio, where Mallinder would spend his days recording with Cabaret Voltaire, and continue on alone into night recording his debut solo material. "I slept very little in those days," he adds, continuing: "It was done on 8 track and very multi-tracked, so lots of recording, then bouncing, and overdubbing, to get the integrated feel of the tracks. I became very adept at pressing record then jumping onto equipment to play it - it was actually a very 'live' record in that sense. I've always seen rhythm at the core of what I do so I loved the layering of counter rhythms. The sequence/arpeggiator parts were all drum machine triggers that were played live. It was about creating a distinct groove so arrangements came from weaving in and out of those linear grooves. It was fun to play everything from drums, guitars, keys, trumpet, percussion, tapes… and record and produce it all. Prince got it from me!"

More information can be found here.

03 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

A supplement to Cantus, Descant, Figures In Open Air offers almost three hours of live recordings and variations. Featuring performances for pipe organ and solo electronics while on tour at Roter Salon in Berlin, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, Église du Gesù in Montreal, and the Lab in San Francisco, from 2018 - 19. Two-disc set.

All tracks composed and performed (organ, synthesizers) by Sarah Davachi.

Out November 6, 2020 on Davachi's own Late Music.  More information can be found here.

03 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

Over the past several years, the recorded output of Carl Stone has been turned on its head. In previous decades, Stone perennially toured new work but kept a harboring gulf of time between the live performances and their recorded release. This not only reflected the careful consideration of the pieces and technical innovations that went into the music but also the largely academic-minded audience that was themselves invested in the history and context of the work. The time span of Stone's recorded output in both sheer musical duration and year range was generously expansive. Following multiple historical overviews of Stone's work on Unseen Worlds and a re-connection with a wider audience, the time between Stone's new work in concert and on record has grown shorter and shorter until there is now almost no distance at all. Stone's work has often at its core explored new potential within popular cultural musics, simultaneously unspooling and satisfying a pop craving. On Stolen Car, the forms of Carl Stone's pieces have also become more compact, making for a progressive new stage in Stone's career where he is not only creating out of pop forms but challenging them.

Stolen Car is the gleeful, heart-racing sound of hijack, hotwire, and escape. Stone carries the easy smirk and confidence of a car thief just out of the can, a magician in a new town setting up a game of balls and cups. With each track he reaches under the steering wheel and yanks a fistful of wires. Boom, the engine roars to life, the car speeds off into the sunset, the cups are tipped over, the balls, like the car, are gone.

"These tracks were all made in late 2019 and 2020, much of when I was in pandemic isolation about 5000 miles from my home base of Tokyo. All are made using my favorite programming language MAX. However distinct these two groupings might be they share some common and long-held musical concerns. I seek to explore the inner workings of the music we listen to using techniques of magnification, dissection, granulation,, anagramization, and others. I like to hijack the surface values of commercial music and re-purpose them offer a newer, different meaning, via irony and subversion."

- Carl Stone, Los Angeles, September 2020

Out now on Unseen Worlds.

02 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

Sound In Silence is happy to announce the return of Panoptique Electrical, presenting his new album Five Pianos.

This is his third album on the label after the highly acclaimed Disappearing Music For Face in 2016 and Quiet Ecology in 2017.

Panoptique Electrical is Jason Sweeney. He predominantly makes ambient compositions, queer sounds and instrumental music on Kaurna Country in so-called Australia. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Five Pianos is comprised of five long-form meditative compositions, written for recent theatre and installation works, with a total duration of about 40 minutes. The brief with many of these compositions was to create space and quietness but also to thread together a prepared piano sound evocative of weather shifts, radio frequencies, pulsation of electromagnetic vibrations and a resignation to human sadness.
Carefully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Five Pianos is a wonderful album of ambient piano for immersions, highly recommended for fans of Harold Budd, Sylvain Chauveau, Antonymes, Library Tapes and Akira Kosemura.

More information can be found here.

02 October 2020

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Albums and Singles

Sound In Silence is proud to welcome back Yellow6, presenting his new album Silent Streets And Empty Skies.

Yellow6 is the solo project of Jon Attwood, based in Leicestershire, UK. During the last two decades he has established himself as one of the foremost purveyors in the ambient/post-rock scene, having released his music on labels such as Enraptured, Make Mine Music, Resonant, Cathedral Transmissions, and his own Editions6, amongst many others. Since 1998 he has played many shows in Europe and North America, and has collaborated with many other artists such as Portal, Thisquietarmy, Absent Without Leave, Caught In The Wake Forever, David Newlyn, Charles Atlas, Stafrænn Hákon and many others too.

Silent Streets And Empty Skies is made up of nine calming tracks with a total duration of about 77 minutes. All tracks, recorded at home between April and June 2020 during the lockdown due to coronavirus, were inspired by the lack of traffic and people in the streets, and, being near an airport, the unusual lack of vapour trails in the sky. Living in a large village on the edge of a city, Attwood had a lot of freedom to walk, visit local parks and cycle maintaining plenty of distance from others and appreciating how quiet the streets and empty the skies were at that time. His reaction to lockdown from a creative perspective was some degree of compulsion to make music. Buying a new guitar proved inspiring and sparked a wave of new material, which makes up this album. Yellow6 offers one of his finest works to date, utilizing layers of haunting guitar melodies, loops of ambient textures, minimal beats and droning feedback.
Expertly mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Silent Streets And Empty Skies is a wonderful album of cinematic soundscapes, highly recommended for devotees of artists such as Labradford, Low, Brian McBride and Windy & Carl.

More information can be found here.

27 September 2020

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Albums and Singles

Mourning Jewelry, the second release from Julie Carpenter’s orchestral outlet, fashions beauty out of grief, even as it takes listeners on a complex journey through darkness and grace, conveying it in not a single lyric. As with the prior release Solifuge, the palette consists of both electronic and acoustic instruments — choir, violin, cello, piano, flute, synth, bells, and this time, more acoustic guitar — that encourages the listener to succumb to grief, at times to feel overwhelmed but to be cathartically guided through and out of the challenging quagmire of emotions.

Kranky

Mourning (or remembrance) jewelry — around since ancient times and reaching peak popularity during Victorian times — has long served as a way to remember deceased loved ones, heartfelt creations seeking to commemorate loved ones and construct beauty from grief. Like religious relics, these pieces were venerated by the wearers, often embedded with hair, bone, and cremains of the deceased. Mourning Jewelry leads off with "Brooch" as a nod to it. To reinforce the mystical aura, Carpenter has stated the track titles comprise the major arcana of an imaginary tarot deck from an alternate universe, ruled by "The Queen of Crickets." Like other tarot decks, various personalities and archetypes are represented in "The Gates," "The Fault," and "The Fang." And, like the Tarot, interpretations are left open to the listener.

The cover of the album features the Queen of Crickets: a woman dressed in combination of mourning Burlesque fashion (as designed by Carpenter), cradling a giant cricket, framed by a dry and barren landscape, hearkening back to the content within. The folksy Americana banjo of the song "Queen of Crickets" bends with classical imagery, suggesting earlier times, harrowing violin underlining an emptiness that echoes the desert landscape on the cover. Each member is masterful enough to mask traditional instruments as modern and vice versa, tricking the listener’s ear and making it more complicated to identify the source of celestial drone, blurring the contrast between ancient and modern.

Carpenter is a masterful composer, having scored for numerous films and television series. She knows exactly how to blur lines, combining sweeping majesty with haunted melody. And, like a soundtrack, moments of natural sound appear throughout the album that often suggest a moment matched to an imaginary film, as in the rolling thunder in "Plait." Plait is to braid, and like hair, compositional elements are braided together to guide the listener. Just as thunder suggests the dual-edged coming of impending rain — offering both inundation and relief — Less Bells’ many plaited elements provide a welcome crafting of beauty out of grief.

Samples available here.

 

27 September 2020

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Albums and Singles

Bob Mould’s career stems from a raw rock aesthetic full of fury, but he has never limited himself to it, as can be attested to as recently as his 2019 album Sunshine Rock, awash in joyful power pop melodies. Cue up 2020 and almost on a complete turnaround, he fully unleashes on Blue Hearts, holding nothing back of the raw emotions that many of us have been experiencing. Utilizing a power trio format that is his earmark, Mould has crafted a raging slab of mobilizing brilliance that is both a reactive and proactive rallying cry for our future, dialing in to anger, disbelief and disorientation that transcend the current headlines, filtered through Mould’s own storied past.

Merge

Mould gets the mildest track out of the way immediately with "Heart on My Sleeve," but lyrically, he clearly sets the stage for the ride to come with this track: "The West Coast is covered in ash and flames / Keep denying the winds of climate change," seething with disgust at the current administration fostering a culture of climate change denial. "The rising tide of a broken government…don’t know who to believe, don’t know what to believe anymore." Unlike the first track, the rest of the album is melodically a frontal blast to the heart, fury turned to maximum and no critical topic left untouched. Apart from the aforementioned climate change, Mould addresses the future we are leaving for the "Next Generation," the decay of free speech, the reintroduction of anti-LGBTQ policies, lambasting the current narcissistic U.S. administration, pseudo-Christianity, aging in a time of crisis...phew. If that is not enough, Mould questions how one can not only maintain one’s humanity through it all, but continue to grow.

There is much raw anger throughout the album, but Blue Hearts also finds Mould opening up about his personal life as well, as he does on "When You Left," a heartfelt and vulnerable look at a past relationship. "Little Pieces" is a naked assessment of overcoming the challenges of aging. "The last few years have been so frustrating, I lose little pieces of myself each day. The lines get deeper on my face each season, say I don’t care as I weather away." "Everything to You" offers optimism in spite of our failings ("We get there somehow with not much know-how") and "Leather Dreams" is a provocative and honest look at his sexual preferences.

Lead single "American Crisis" was originally written for Sunshine Rock but left off for stylistic reasons. Blue Hearts was an album written around it. "Wake up every day to see a nation in flames, we click and we tweet and we spread these tales of blame. It’s another American crisis, keeps me wide awake at night." The key word here is "another." Mould lived through the 1980s as a young, gay man touring in an America that was chillingly mute on the AIDS crisis. "Silence = Death" was true then, just as it is now, and Mould reminds us that we are experiencing a tragically parallel chain of events in continuing to treat so many tragedies with denial and inaction.

Sound samples may be heard here.